On Sun, 26 Jan 2003 17:04:44 -0400, L.D. Best wrote: > Just a minimal note here on "scientific" and "prevailing" ...
> For a process to be scientific, you must be able to have 3rd, 4th, > multiple-party replications of the experiment/process which give the > same results. In real-life geological time spans, "same results" would > be within a certain number of centuries "plus or minus" ... > "Prevailing," almost by definition, applies to theory or belief rather > than to proven/proveable fact. > For instance, the prevailing explanation for fossils and geological > formations -- shown to date back millenia using scientific method -- by > "Young Earthers" is that everything found & studied was somehow > "pre-aged" and placed in situ by the Creator a few thousand years ago. > However, none of the arguments the "Young Earthers" come up with seem to > offer any reason why a Creator would pull that sort of BS on creatures > S/He loved and made guardians of said Earth. According to the beliefs of the "Young Earthers" and the "Creation Scientists", God likes to play games with them to test their faith. According to them, God deliberately created things in such a way so as to see if they would be tempted into trusting more in their logical reasoning faculties than in trusting in their faith that everything in the Bible is literally true. They support this belief about how God likes to test their faith by pointing out certain stories in the Bible, notably the story of Job and the story about Abraham and Isaac, which do in fact, according to most interpretations, present the view that God does indeed like to test the faith of all who would want to believe in Him. Whether one is inclined to trust more in science than in religious faith, or vice-versa, he will certainly at times get the impression that the very foundations of his belief system are being subjected to testing and that they are open to question. Sam Heywood -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser: http://browser.arachne.cz/
